Observations on the Western Australian Senate Result

Observations on the Western Australian Senate Result

by David Archibald

28 May 2019

As at 26th May, this is how the minor parties on the right polled in the Senate for WA in the 2019 election:

There is a quota for one senator in the total. These are people who want more than the slop that the Liberals keep serving up. But at the moment they will have nobody representing them in parliament.

Most of these parties will fall beside the wayside by the next election. What is going to happen from here?

With respect to Pauline’s party, it burst back on the scene in the 2016 election due to Pauline’s brand name. But Pauline is not interested in policy and didn’t do anything original. We know she is not interested in defence because she failed to read a book on defence I had written and given her a copy of. Then again nobody in Parliament at the moment is interested in defence, including the new defence minister.

The puff has also gone out of Pauline’s state representation in WA. Only one of the three elected to the upper house in the last election turned out to be any good (Robin Scott). It is most likely that Pauline’s party will not have candidates for WA in the next federal election. So that is a big chunk of quota looking for a home.

That said, it is interesting that the One Nation website had the best discussion of climate and energy policy of any party, including detailed discussion of the science. The major parties still are quite happy to thrash the economy with carbon taxes without any understanding of why they are doing it -– thus Tanya Plibersek didn’t know the answer to Alan Jones’ question of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Fraser Anning’s party had a late start in WA, and polled in the middle of the pack. What happens from here depends upon the party being able to build its supporter base. It is still only two months old.

Clive Palmer’s party, United Australia, did not get any traction despite spending $254 per Senate vote across the country. Clive cooked his goose when he was first elected by not having any principles. When the Liberals were going to wind up the parasitic Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the forces of darkness flew in someone even larger than Clive to talk him around – Al Gore. The Australian public saw straight through Clive and kept on walking. He won’t be back, so that is 0.12% of a quota looking for a home.

Australian Christians are consistent at their vote level and will be back next time.

You could see that the Australian Conservatives had plenty of money this election, because they had a lot of corflutes and other advertising out. But none of their corflutes were stolen or damaged because the public understood that the Australian Conservatives were harmless. They had a slogan like “Be sensible”. No traction and this party will disappear.

The Liberal Democrats have been running on fumes left from Senator Leyonhjelm’s time in the Senate. Libertarians tend to have unrealistic expectations of human nature and tend to be too doctrinaire to get along with. But that is still 7,731 souls who will need to find a home.

The Shooters etc. are good people, but have no interest in much beyond shooting and fishing when they are not farming. They are a reaction to the greenies running government departments continually impinging on their lifestyle. They may stay around but are self-limiting due to their limited interests.

The Great Australia party was One Nation’s first senator from WA, Rod Culleton, on some mission to fix the constitution. No traction.

The Yellow Pests was the Australian Liberty Alliance recycled from the 2016 election. Such pestilential people got the result they deserved.

Which leaves the National Party. While they are supposed to be right wing farmers looking out for the interests of hardworking farm folk, the National Party has drifted to the left over the years. Under Brendan Grylls, their state leader up to the 2017 election, they tried to outflank Labor on the left to get the Aboriginal vote. For this election they had a button saying ‘Climate’ on their website but when you pressed it, nothing happened. They have no principles and thus are losing traction. It is just a party of opportunists now. They put in a big effort this election and didn’t get anybody up, polling only twice as much as Fraser Anning’s party.

While we are all relieved that Labor didn’t win the 2019 election, we also realise that the Liberals will drift over the next three years and the public will even more sick of them going into the 2022 election. There may be a lot of people who voted Liberal this time who will want more substance next time. There is a basic litmus for our politicians –- if they want to repeal the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (the basis of all the carbon taxes and renewables legislation) then they want to country to prosper; if not, they want Australia to go backwards.

And there will be near one senate quota in WA looking for a home come the 2022 election.